Wow, I just looked at the date of my last post...October 2009! It has been a while!
Life in the hills has been chugging on as normal since then. Normal for us is lots of stressful times but lots of fun times as well. We've had Christmas, birthdays and holidays. I've started working again (2 days a week). Darren has had to be a bit more of a Mr Mum which he hasn't really enjoyed (with the stress of all the work still to do on the house!). We have gone through a time of real uncertainty and instability as we have tried to balance finishing the house with earning enough money for our ever increasing mortgage. We have finally made the decision we need to sell up. This house has just cost way too much, way more than we ever estimated. We cannot afford to keep it. It seems like this would be very sad for us but really, we are "over it"! We need to move on to the next stage of our life. We need a home that is complete that we can pour ourselves into, put all our things away and know they can stay there forever. We need less stress. We need less pressure especially financially. We are actually looking forward to the journey ahead.
We have just borrowed a last amount of money and have determined to have the house on the market by the end of June. Darren is working full time on it and we've got some other tradesmen in to help. We have got enough money to get everything we need to finish the job and live in the meantime.
Things left to do are; upstairs bathrooms finished, second staircase and stairs down to garage, lots of painting inside and out, carpet in guest room and "green" loungeroom and the rumpus room floor. As we speak, the back deck is being done and it is going to be beautiful! We really wanted a great outdoor entertaining space that would give the extra "Wow factor"! We also need to landscape and plant and mulch some garden beds.
Please don't be sad for us! We have learnt so much and we have created a beautiful home! We hope to get a good price for it which will enable us to buy something more normal and live comfortably. We've also thought a lot about what we'd like in our next house, the things we want that we don't have here (like more flat land to kick a footy and ride bikes) and the things here that we don't really need.
That all said, here are some new photos.
The second staircase coming down into the entrance hall has begun to take shape. The lower half will be made out of the blackwood timber cut down on the block.
Our new back deck!
The undercover BBQ part.
The view from the dining room.
My fabulous laundry!
The beautiful entrance hall. I love the wallpaper.
Our ensuite, we used the same wallpaper on a small wall between the bathroom and the walk-in robes. I love the shower, it is so luxurious.
Our bedroom.
Slab in lower garage.
Slab in upper garage.
The lovely dining room!
The staircase is done, just needs lacquering and caps on all the posts! Very grand!!
The rumpus room!
At least the floorboards are all laid.
Floorboards being laid in the Rumpus Room.
The deck is now finished.
The staircase is coming along. I can't work out how to turn the picture around so you'll have to look at it sideways!
The second staircase coming down into the entrance hall has begun to take shape. The lower half will be made out of the blackwood timber cut down on the block.
Our new back deck!
The undercover BBQ part.
The view from the dining room.
My fabulous laundry!
The beautiful entrance hall. I love the wallpaper.
Our ensuite, we used the same wallpaper on a small wall between the bathroom and the walk-in robes. I love the shower, it is so luxurious.
Our bedroom.
Slab in lower garage.
Slab in upper garage.
Excuse the flash reflections in the photo! This is our "home theatre" come family TV room. I really wanted a red room and this is it. It has 2 levels for seats and a little divider wall on the left. It's hard to see the colour exactly but we are very happy with it. There are so many reds out there!!
Finally the kids have their trampoline back. This is our back yard area off the back deck. Eventually I would like to pave it and have a basketball ring etc here as well, and access to a cubby up in the trees somewhere!
Over the last two Saturdays we have had birthday parties for Amber and Nicky. The weather was beautiful and it was so nice to use the house to entertain. We set up the table out the front as the back deck isn't finished yet. Here is Amber opening her presents.
Here is her horse cake!!
Nicky and the pinata!!
Nicky's party was a "Weird Creatures" party! Here is one of the creatures that came. Her name is Pudgie!
Nicky's monster cake!
Another weird guest!
Nicky as a four armed, ten eyed, something or other!
We really want to paint our family room / theatre room in a RED but finding the right red is a difficult process!
This is our walk in wardrobe in the main bedroom.
Remember the trees we cut down all those months ago? See here. Well here is some of them, milled and dried and used as feature timbers around the house. This is in the kitchen and we're also building our main staircase out of it. It is Blackwood.
Here's hubby measuring some of the Blackwood.
